Sir,
At long last, the Congress President Rahul Gandhi has been acting as the unifier of the anti-BJP forces giving up the arrogance associated with the grand old party that it is the natural party of governance. Karnataka assembly elections results set the process and frankly speaking, the emergence of the BJP as the single largest party in Karnataka assembly bringing down the Congress strength from 122 to 78, was a blessing for the opposition unity. If the Congress would have got majority like the 2013 elections, the party would have remained arrogant like before and the Congress President would not have opted for all out efforts to build a unity of the anti-BJP parties even including the smaller ones.
What is most positive about the opposition prospects is that the Congress took the initiative to persuade the JD(S) to agree to the strategy of a pre-poll alliance against the BJP in the coming Lok Sabha poll and further, soon after the Kairana and the other by poll results were out, Rahul Gandhi gave green signal to the Madhya Pradesh Congress President Kamal Nath to have discussions with the BSP leader for an alliance for the coming assembly elections. Rahul is now of the view that all efforts will have to be made to minimize the division of anti-BJP votes and only through this, the saffrons can be kept out of power at the centre after the next Lok Sabha elections.
The path of opposition unity for 2019 Lok Sabha elections is not quite smooth, but the ground is favourable and even if there is common understanding in 60 per cent of the Lok Sabha seats, that will be adequate to bring the BJP strength down to less than 150 seats. This should be the normal strength of the saffrons. The 2014 figure of 282 was due to an abnormal political situation. That situation is no more there, the ground is fertile and it depends on the opposition parties to take advantage of that without making any big mess in the next ten months.
Yours etc….
Nitya Chakraborty
on e-mail
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